Every Turnstile Album Ranked Worst To Best
From the breakdown-heavy Nonstop Feeling to the expansive sound of Glow On, we rank the four albums that have shaped Turnstile’s journey.
As the legendary Justice Tripp, a peer of Baltimore hardcore outfit Turnstile, once said in an interview with Marshall, ‘If someone puts your record on and you can’t tell me who that band is, then you failed. You need to put your fingerprint on your music.’
That is exactly what grabbed me in 2021, when I first heard the opening seconds of ‘MYSTERY’ on Glow On and discovered Turnstile. What hit me straight away was the band’s authenticity, their personality and that unmistakable sense that nobody else could have made these records. That same identity runs through every album below.
For this ranking, I am leaving out the EPs and sticking only to the full-length releases.
4) Nonstop Feeling (2015)
Forgive me in advance for the repeated references to Turnstile’s live shows, but after seeing them three times in the last year and a half, I cannot really separate these songs from the chaos they create in a room.
Outside of Glow On and Never Enough, Nonstop Feeling still feels like the album that feeds their live show the most. The reason is simple: the songs are ridiculously memorable, and breakdowns seem to appear everywhere. There is a reason these tracks still trigger absolute carnage. In Portugal, people still talk about how wild the crowd got when the band first played here. Allegedly, multiple ambulances had to be called because the room was in complete meltdown. That feels very on-brand for this album.
It also helped cement Daniel Fang as one of the most exciting drummers in Baltimore, which is saying something. His playing is sharp, creative and relentless, and the production manages to sound clean without ever becoming sterile.
The band did not reinvent themselves here. Instead, they delivered a modern hardcore classic, packed with groove, hooks and flashes of hip-hop-inflected rhythm that hinted they were already looking ahead.
3) Never Enough (2025)
Let me be clear: Never Enough is not in third place because I dislike experimentation. Quite the opposite. Genre-blending is one of the reasons I love hardcore, and one of the reasons I love Turnstile in the first place. If anything, this record means a great deal to me personally because it genuinely helped me through a difficult period in my life.
The album opens with the title track, ‘Never Enough’, and it does so beautifully. It feels emotional, hopeful and wide open, with clear vocals and introspective lyrics setting the tone for a record that is as raw as it is pop. Yes, pop. And proudly so.
The production is pristine, almost mirroring the blue-skied artwork: bright, expansive, and full of air. Yet even when the album gets heavier, like on ‘DULL’, it never loses that bright production. It still feels immediate, raw and strangely addictive. That balance, between abrasion and accessibility, is really the whole point of the record.
By the time ‘Magic Man’ closes things out, the band sounds galaxies away from Step 2 Rhythm or Nonstop Feeling. But somehow that distance only proves the point. Hardcore, in Turnstile’s hands, is not just a sound. It is an ethos. It is a way of making music without fences.
Few bands embody that better. This is a group that has shared stages with everyone from Agnostic Front to Clipse, from Terror to Vince Staples, and made it all feel completely natural. That open-hearted, barrier-free spirit is all over Never Enough.
2) Time & Space (2018)
If Never Enough shows where Turnstile can go, Time & Space is the record where they first really fling the doors open.
‘Real Thing’ begins with Brendan Yates sounding like he is singing for air, pushing introspection to the edge of panic, before the whole thing drops and Franz Lyons comes crashing in on bass. It feels abrupt, disorienting, brilliant. And then, just when you think you know where the song is going, it ends in a strange little flourish that sounds almost like lift music. Somehow, against all odds, it works.
That oddness is part of what makes this album so exciting. On ‘Big Smile’, the band throws so many influences into the mix that it almost feels unruly, especially when Yates loops the word ‘smile’ into something slightly warped and hypnotic, a bit like Avenged Sevenfold (?). Then ‘Bomb’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Blind’ arrive as one of the best one-two punches in their catalogue, with that perfect transition into the moment where Yates erupts: ‘DON’T WANNA BE BLIND, DON’T WANNA BE’.
Overall, this is the record that laid the groundwork for everything that followed. For me, it ranks above Never Enough because it feels like the perfect marriage between the hardcore-punk urgency of Step 2 Rhythm and the melodic, almost pop instincts that would later flourish in Never Enough.
It is the sound of a band in motion, passing the torch to their future selves and already looking bigger than the scene around them. Even then, it felt like Turnstile were on their way to becoming the most successful hardcore band in the world.
1) Glow On (2021)
This is one of those rare moments where I find myself in full agreement with the critical consensus. Glow On is not just Turnstile’s best album. It is one of those records that feels genuinely flawless, apart from the minor tragedy of the fact that it eventually ends.
It is also, I suspect, one of the records that made a huge number of people fall in love with hardcore for the first time.
‘MYSTERY’ and ‘BLACKOUT’ strike that perfect balance between dreaminess, massive riffs, shimmering textures and utterly commanding vocals. Brendan Yates sounds like someone stepping fully into their powers. Everything feels locked in.
‘Holiday’ remains one of my personal favourites, opening with a brilliant bass line from Franz before spiralling into a ridiculous breakdown that, at least to my ears, nods to the kind of chaos Circle Jerks or Black Flag perfected years ago.
Then there is ‘Alien Love Call’, which in 2021 felt like it could become Turnstile’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’. With Blood Orange involved, and with the song leaning fully into a softer, more melodic mood, it felt like a potential crossover moment of enormous proportions. I may have been wrong about just how big that specific song would become live, but not because it lacked the quality. More likely because this band now has an absurd number of great songs to choose from.
And then there is ‘T.L.C.’, which for me is the best Turnstile song full stop. It is everything the band does well, packed into a short, explosive burst: perfect riff, ridiculous drums, vocals completely locked into the rhythm, and then that unforgettable refrain, ‘Thank you for letting me see myself’, which has already become something close to scripture for fans. The way it ends, with the synths and the chant-like repetition, feels almost spiritual.
For every young listener who found hardcore through Glow On, the genre owes this record something. And so does the community around it.